Page 10 of The Cowboy's Secret Babies

Rosie had spent a lot of time since then thinking a whole lot about the choices she’d made since that pivotal moment in that Target bathroom stall.

She found herself defending those choices in her head. Or in the bathroom mirror.

And every time she did, it sounded weaker.

She’d expected that Ryder would seek her out the next time he came home, if only to be polite. After all, what happened in Austin had been so…

But she didn’t want to think about that night. It had caused her enough trouble already, not that she would change it now that she had Levi and Eli.

Back then, she’d thought thatat the very least, this being such a small community, a famous man like Ryder would want to make sure that they were good. Good enough to ignore each other when they saw each other in public, that was. Good enough to make sure there would be no scenes.

But he didn’t come home. And when he did, he only saw his family briefly, then left again.

Rosie intended to tell him, she really did, but he never gave her the opportunity.

And yes, sure, she knew his family. She knew exactly where they lived. She could have tracked him down. But it all seemed so sordid and unfair whenhenever bothered to follow up after that night.

What was she supposed to do? Drop in on the Carey family while they were having Sunday dinner, announce that Ryder had knocked her up after one long night after finals week her senior year? And ask if they could maybe give her his phone number?

The very idea of it had made her want to die of shame.

And then she really did feel as if she was dying of shame, and maybe was, because she kept getting more and more pregnant.

The thing about twins was that carrying them wasn’tsubtle.

The pregnancy had been rough. They’d come early, the way twins did, and she’d spent the last month of it on bed rest. That had been a great opportunity to mourn the life she’d lost that night as well as to worry over the new life she was about to start, with two tiny babies to keep alive.

Though at least it had been a lovely change of pace from wandering around town, the subject of all the gossip.

Then, if she was brutally honest, brand-new motherhood had about killed her. And she’d had a whole lot of help. She had no idea how single mothers with no one did it, except, of course, she understood now that mothers… just figured it out.

Because they had to.

Rosie was lucky. The Starks were a big, sprawling family. Her grandparents had produced three sons. Wes, the oldest, had died only a few years ago. Jimmy, Rosie’s father, had died long ago. The other uncle, Steven, was still alive, but hadn’t gotten along with either of his brothers, maybe ever. He and Wes had liked to come by separately and bring up their grievances, then lay them all at Jack’s feet as if he was the reincarnation of his own father.

At least all the cousins got along. Uncle Steven’s three sons were feral, since their mother had run off when they were little and Steven was… not exactly nurturing. Sarah Jane, everyone’s favorite cousin, was the only child of Uncle Wes. She was also Cowboy Point’s librarian, a fierce advocate for every lost lamb she encountered, and she’d been a stalwart support for Rosie from the start.

The cousins had long been united in their desire to finally rehabilitate the old Cowboy Point Lodge. It was their fathers who hadn’t gotten along and could never agree on a thing, so the place had fallen apart once Grandma and Grandpa Stark got too old to run it.

Jack was personally determined to give the place a new life and what Jack said usually happened.

But the second, major Stark cousin bonding experience was the twins.

Once all of her male relatives understood that Rosie wouldn’t be sharing the name of the baby’s father no matter how they shouted about it, they all jumped on board. The same way they did everything else.

Jack acted like the babies’s father, just as he had when Rosie was a baby. Sarah Jane had moved in for the first month or two. Matilda was always good with small mammals.

Wyatt, Logan, and Noah made a game out of coming by. Rosie didn’t trust her cousins not to hurt themselves, as wild as they were, but she did trust them not to hurt her boys. First they’d competed as to who was the better mother’s helper in those terrifying early days. Then, as time went on, they’d taken the twins to doman things. Possiblyateach other.

They would always come back with the best pictures of the twins having adventures, from fishing or hiking up some of the trails around town to pretending to help out with the lodge renovations. It was cute.

But ever since she’d run into Zeke and she’d watched him figured it out in a glance, she’d known, deep down, that she was on borrowed time.

The truth was, she always had been. She’d been kidding herself.

She could already tell that the twins looked like their daddy. Zeke wouldn’t be the only one to make that connection, especially not now that Ryder was back in town. Rosie had never been anywhere near Wilder Carey and besides, even if he hadn’t gone ahead and married Cat Lisle, Wilder had never been one to mess around close to home. Everyone knew his reputation, but it was made down in the Wolf Den, the seedy Marietta bar where reputations were made and drenched in whiskey, usually in the company of strangers.

Now that Ryder was back,ifRyder was back, people might look a little closer at Rosie’s little boys.

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